Commodity Money
Before the advent of the 7–8th century CE, Japan used commodity money for its exchanges. It generally consisted of material that was compact, easily transportable and had a widely recognized value. Commodity money was a great improvement over simple barter, in which commodities were simply exchanged against others. Ideally, commodity money had to be widely accepted, easily portable and storable, and easily combined and divided in order to correspond to different values. The main items of commodity money in Japan were arrowheads, rice grains and gold powder, as well as hemp cloth.
This contrasted somewhat with countries like China, where one of the most important item of commodity money came from the Southern seas: shells. Since then however, the shell has become a symbol for money in many Chinese and Japanese ideograms.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Currency
Famous quotes containing the words commodity and/or money:
“If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator—the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)
“I went to the circus, and loafed around the back side till the watchman went by, and then dived in under the tent. I had my twenty-dollar gold piece and some other money, but I reckoned I better save it.... I ain’t opposed to spending money on circuses, when there ain’t no other way, but there ain’t no use in wasting it on them.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)